


Yeah, Yeah.  "For Anthropology," I Guess.

by thatsrightdollface



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe, Camping, Exorcisms, Fluff, Ghosts, M/M, Talent Development Plan, they're all students at Hope's Peak Academy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-16 21:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13644699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: So, Shuichi agreed to go on a worldwide anthropology-studying tour with Korekiyo, huh?  Looks like Kokichi might have to tag along. Can’t be helped!





	1. Ghosts: 0.   Mosquitoes: Many.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been thinking about doing something like this ever since completing Korekiyo’s friendship route, ahahaha~ Thank you so much for reading. :’) I hope you have fun with it, if you do!! Sorry as always for any and all mistakes. 
> 
> ~Have a great day~!

Generally, Kokichi Oma thought he got along pretty okay with his boyfriend’s friends.  Sure they thought he was a schemer, wearing lies closer than his own skin, and sure they’d probably witnessed him pulling over-the-top pranks somewhere across campus at one point or another. That was a given, and it wasn’t like they were wrong about _most_  of the stuff they said he’d done.  Hope’s Peak Academy had a lot of eccentric types running around – kinda had to, what with being a school for the champions of some really specific categories – 

_(Ultimate High School Level Affluent Progeny?  More like Ultimate High School Level Seto Kaiba/Draco Malfoy, right?)_

— But everybody in their class knew Kokichi was that tricksy, probably-dangerous Ultimate Supreme Leader who may or may not be up to something devastating, and everybody in their class knew Shuichi Saihara was the gentle-eyed detective who had chosen to date him for some reason.  Voluntarily, even!  And  _he’d_  asked Kokichi out, after bringing him to a Batman exhibit passing through a local museum.  After buying him soda and taking the fall for him when they stained some fancy museum carpet sugary purple.  After Kokichi’d been hinting that they should date for so, so long.  Challenging him to impromptu life-or-death card games... Setting up tea parties. 

Honestly, people kinda expected weird things from a couple like  _that_ , even at a place like Hope’s Peak Academy!

But Kokichi wanted Shuichi to be proud of him even so, once they finally started dating, and a big part of that was  _not_ dousing the people he cared about in paint or rigging their backpacks with little electronic voices to mess with them during class.

_(At least not at first. Until he knew that wouldn’t be, you know, a dealbreaker.  Things were a little iffy for a while there with Kaito Momota, but they had a sort of Tom-and-Jerry thing going now that Shuichi didn’t seem to hate too bad.  For a while Kaito might’ve honestly thought the voice in his backpack was his own actual subconscious!_

_What an idiot._

_Kokichi said that sort of thing in friendship, mind you, but mostly just ‘cause Shuichi seemed pretty attached to the guy.) _

One of Shuichi’s friends, though, was a bit of an enigma as far as Kokichi was concerned, and  _that_  was Korekiyo Shinguji.  The guy hadn’t even offered Kokichi a ghost story at his school festival haunted house booth, and he totally could have.  They’d all gone to see some hilariously bad movie about cult exorcisms just the week before!  Whatever Kokichi did – no matter how many seances he volunteered to assist with, or however many times he waited very patiently after school for Shuichi and Korekiyo’s weekly one-on-one anthropology lesson to end, the guy didn’t seem to warm up much.

_(Yeah, Shuichi had signed up for one-on-one anthropology things back in Freshman year._

_Kokichi didn’t get it, but maybe it was because his detective and Kiyo both loved books and sitting around the school library so much?)_

Korekiyo murmured over his shoulder at an invisible  _someone_  when Kokichi was around, and he only ever wanted to “observe” at board game nights.  Apparently that meant lurking a couple feet away and snickering demurely every now and then, or else commenting on how beautifully disgusting humanity could be at  _very_  awkward moments.  He actually threatened to rip Kokichi’s nerves out one time, too, when he’d just been playing a little with the fancy antique sword Kiyo’d brought in to accompany one of his essays!  Shuichi’d assured him Kiyo never would’ve actually hurt him, but still.  He’d looked sort of like he was possessed by a creepy slow-rotting spirit, right about then!  Eyes all swimmy and green-gold like jewelry on a mummy’s skin.  Voice like…   _Whispery dangerous_.  Yikes.

But – again – Kokichi really, really wanted to get along with his boyfriend’s friends, when it mattered.  They could think he was weird and probably an antique sword thief all they wanted, so long as they didn’t give Shuichi too hard a time about keeping him around.  Korekiyo, though.  Kokichi just didn’t get it.

So when Shuichi agreed to go tour around a lot of prime anthropological sites with Korekiyo after graduation, Kokichi was sort of like, “Hey cool.”  He was  _also_  sort of like, “Hey I hope Shuichi doesn’t somehow end up getting himself killed for anthropology. That wouldn’t be funny at all!”

Korekiyo might’ve known a lot about spooky lullabies, and he might have had a lot to say about how  _exactly_  you get in touch with different kinds of ghosts, but that didn’t mean Kokichi trusted him.  Like…  At all.  Honestly –  _heh, as if Kokichi wasn’t always honest! –_  some of his D.I.C.E. members had noticed early in that Korekiyo looked a little like the police sketches of an infamous serial killer who had struck abroad a few times.  He’d been keeping a pretty close eye, since then, and even if Kiyo hadn’t done anything fishy at Hope’s Peak yet that didn’t mean he was in the clear.  Hence, you know, waiting for Shuichi’s anthropology lessons to end.  Even when there was a show on he  _really_  wanted to watch, too! 

And that was how Kokichi invited himself along on Shuichi and Korekiyo’s fancy anthropological after-graduation quest.  It was how he found himself setting up a tent in the middle of a muggy, sweat-soaked forest, too, learning once again how Korekiyo Shinguji didn’t believe in portable air conditioner units.

_(Korekiyo had grudgingly agreed not to kick him out of the van they’d rented when he found Kokichi’d smuggled himself away in there, but only because Shuichi had been such a damn amazing anthropology student, or something.  And apparently he would’ve been a good friend for Kiyo’s sister, too?  If he’d been a girl...?  Something like that.  Whatever.  Anyway, he’d said Kokichi had to keep quiet and behave himself, and definitely not interrupt any lectures with faux Chupacabra sightings.)_

Kokichi hadn’t seen a Chupacabra, yet. He also hadn’t seen any flitting, hungry-eyed strangers when they went to visit a crooked hawthorn fairy tree, and the well Kiyo said had swallowed dozens of children didn’t cough up any grasping death-warped arms for him.  Korekiyo Shinguji, the Ultimate Anthropologist, knew where all the ghosts liked to hang out, and what exactly they meant to the communities around them.  It was kind of fun watching Shuichi light up alongside him.  Reading poems off crumbling gravestones all smothered in ivy; running their fingers along the walls in ancient churches as Kiyo chatted on and on in a smothery dreaming voice about the people and/or innocent animals maybe buried inside to guard the place. 

_(Fun, but Kokichi would’ve been lying if he said he wasn’t the littlest bit jealous. At least Shuichi fell asleep next to him in the tent, though, curled up tight in his sleeping bag and breathing so, so softly. _

_At least Shuichi caught Kokichi’s hand when he tripped climbing giant dumb mountains to feel wind spirits in their hair or whatever._

_Things could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.)_

Kokichi swatted a mosquito off the back of his neck, and hissed “Aw, more blood! Yay,” through his teeth, down at the red smeary wet along his palm.  His hair was tied back in a little flippy ponytail, and he was wearing one of the Ghost Tour shirts Shuichi had bought him when he found out how few clothes he’d smuggled along when he hitched a ride. 

_(Couldn’t fit too much in with you, traveling via duffel bag.)_

So far, no ghosts, but at least Shuichi and Korekiyo would be back from cooing over creepy crypt dolls soon enough and they’d finally get to cook dinner together.  In a circle around a campfire as the sun set, forest whispering and shifting all around them. 

Shuichi might even say Kokichi’d done a good job with the tent. The moonlight would be like watery silk through the humid air of that place, catching in his eyes, his hair.  Kokichi wouldn’t even mind the sweat and bug spray smell, if they got to make out a little before Korekiyo started laughing all “Kekekeke” and trying to plot the ghost adventure they’d go on the next day. 

So far, no actual ghosts.  So far.


	2. Nicknames for the Van: 28.  Nicknames Kiyo Likes: 0.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, and welcome to chapter two~ : ) I hope you have fun with it, if you read. Sorry if you think this takes things in a kinda weird direction… I knew I wanted to do a ghost-friendly AU from the beginning, though, and it was super fun to write. :P Thank you, Kiyo, for giving me an excuse to write a fic like this. 
> 
> And also - thank YOU, again, for reading!! :D Have an amazing day~ Happy day before Valentine's Day, too?

As usual, Shuichi was the last one to pry himself out of the tent the next morning, which Kokichi had told him was cute a ton of times now.  Never seemed like Shuichi believed him, though.  But he _did_ like the vulnerable way his detective’s hair stuck up all over the place before he smoothed it down. He liked the way his voice blurred just a little around the edges, like he couldn’t help being anything but sleepily honest, too, and he liked the bleary warmth in his eyes when he saw Kokichi was already heating up some water for coffee.

_(Korekiyo had offered to do the coffee after he finished up his elaborate four AM getting-ready ritual, actually, but Kokichi wanted that warmth all for his very own.)_

The forest floor was soggy and fresh with dew, so Kokichi had to be pretty careful where he sat down – birds flitted between all the branches above them, whispering furtive little half-songs like they all had somewhere more important to be.  Shuichi closed his eyes and drank the coffee Kokichi had made him, cupping the travel mug in both hands.  They slathered their shoulders with sticky sunscreen and bug spray, marveling yet again at how Korekiyo never seemed to wear any.  It was amazing, said Shuichi – eh, that was _one_ word for it!

“He’s just really dedicated to the work,” Shuichi said.  Korekiyo flashed him knowing, quietly fond eyes over the battered journal he was taking notes down in.  His handwriting was fluid and sort of show off-y nice, Kokichi thought.  Just one step down from calligraphy.

“Yeah, sure,” Kokichi said.  “Maybe.  Could also have something to do with his long sleeves, hat and, you know, _mysterious zippered gimp mask_.”  

“Why not both explanations?” Korekiyo called.  He sounded nice and cheerful that morning, though he’d been whispering to something Kokichi couldn’t see for a good long while before Shuichi got up.  He was probably in a good mood ‘cause the place they’d head off to was extra depressing.  Maybe another one of those ruined castles with hollow, silvery candlelight in the dead-eye windows, where somebody’d killed a billion foolish lovers and nobody ever seemed to think, _“Y’know, maybe that person’s just not safe to date right now!”_

 And so they packed up camp – really, Kokichi thought tents shouldn’t be allowed to have so many fiddly, easy-to-lose pieces, ‘cause it felt like doing the same increasingly boring puzzle day after day – and headed out in their van.  This was the fourth van they’d rented during the course of the expedition, and it was stuffed full of mementos from their journey.  A smiling kitsune mask from their time back home in Japan; plastic vampire teeth Kokichi’d gotten a kick out of when they went to Romania.  A replica of Perseus’s Medusa-face shield, linked back to Korekiyo’s favorite myth; Shuichi’s souvenir Sherlock Holmes-y bowler hat.  All that jazz, you know?  It was a cozy space, in its way, albeit stupidly hot and full of muddy book bags Korekiyo had gotten them to lug around from van to van to van.

Kokichi texted pictures back home to his D.I.C.E. teammates as they drove the rambling, super bumpy road up wherever they were going.  The reception was shit, so pretty much nothing got sent one way or another except a single photo of himself and Shuichi wading through a freezing, quicksilver-bright stream where people said the spirits of dead babies liked to show up.  Nobody around would eat the fish from those waters, which Korekiyo thought was fascinating.  So afraid of death they wouldn’t let something “contaminated” by the next life past their teeth.

They drove for a while, and then they hiked for a while.  That old song and dance.  Kokichi’s checkered sneakers were very dirty and had pine needles stuck in them by the time they made it to the empty town.

The place wasn’t exactly creepy by Korekiyo standards, not at first.  It was a clearing full of wispy gold light.  Full of trees, too, and rotten houses.  Cracked streets, with weeds growing up through the concrete.  Some of the homes were missing roofs, and some were missing doors.  All of them were sinking softly into that wet and waiting earth.

There were moldy books on the shelves inside, and toys that had been nibbled to death by squirrels and time. 

“Now, this place is _something_ ,” said Korekiyo, with one of his little smothered laughs.  “Because one day – not very long ago – somebody came from the closest city and found everyone here had died in the night.  Bent over their homework, maybe, or asleep beside someone they loved very much.  It didn’t matter…  They were all dead, or at least that’s how the story was told.  Not as many newspapers covered the deaths as you might expect, Shuichi.”

“Almost as though no one was surprised,” Shuichi whispered.

“Exactly,” said Korekiyo.  The zipper on his always-questionable gimp mask caught a little light as he smiled.  Reminded Kokichi of the ghost-type Pokémon “Banette,” sometimes, though a Banette may or may not have talked about mass death, poison, disease and covered-up murder in such a breathless sing-song. 

Kokichi kicked stones down those dead-still streets.  He snapped a couple pictures for D.I.C.E. and checked to see if there was still stray mail in anybody’s mailbox. 

_(There was, but don’t get the wrong idea.  He didn’t read any of it!  It wasn’t even in a language he could’ve read, anyway.)_

As Kokichi messed around, he half-listened to Korekiyo compare the buildings to washed-out photographs in one of his books.  Kiyo was telling Shuichi about rumors people spread in cities around that part of the world, nowadays, after the town died in the night.  How it had affected bedtime stories.  Nursery rhymes.

Kokichi knew Korekiyo was going to recite creepy poetry before he even started reciting creepy poetry.  Kiyo just had an “it’s time for creepy poetry” sort of voice, sometimes.  _Apparently,_ there had been an art show in a place not too far from that forest, and one of the paintings had been of a couple spooky crumbling houses from the empty town.  The poem Korekiyo recited had been the piece’s title, and whoever had painted it died soon after finishing the thing.  Convenient? 

_(That, or they just deleted their website.  Kiyo was vague on the details, but it hardly mattered.)_

What mattered was how still and clutching the heat in that place got, just as Korekiyo finished with Creepy Poem Theater Time.

The last line – “ _To the dark our breath was sold_ ” – and then the world felt like snuffed-out breath all around them.  Not even lying!  Everything went desperately still, so still Kokichi almost felt like he wouldn’t be able to get in enough air.  He checked the time on his phone to guesstimate how long they’d be sticking around, then, and there it was.  Something reflected behind him….  Something like a woman standing in the street, her hair tangled into long, grave-dirt braids, her face caved in.  An empty space.  A pulp.

He could practically feel her pain, even in that instant, as the phone shifted from a black mirror to the background picture he’d set of Shuichi trying to play charades.  She was struggling to breathe, but a person couldn’t very well breathe with a caved-in face.  Spiderwebs thick as hospital gauze were sewn through the meat of her, and Kokichi thought she was reaching for him.

He spun around, or course, choking on some very colorful words…  But there was nothing behind him.  Nothing but dandelions breaking their way through a road no one would drive down ever again.  Not even a stirring in the air.

Kokichi gagged, and called, “Uh, Shuichi?  Korekiyo?  I’m thinking I might need a water break…  Or something.”

“I saw her, too,” said Korekiyo, a little _too calm_.  “She was so fully realized – the hurt here…  It’s fresher than I thought it would be.”

And Shuichi – looking up from Korekiyo’s book all worried – said, “Hm?  Saw what?  I have some water, Kokichi.  Just a second.”

Kokichi _did_ need water, actually, and also…  Potentially…  To reevaluate every single stop they’d taken so far?  All the abandoned hospitals, all the polished marble mausoleums.  He held Shuichi’s sleeve a little; his hands were shaking only the tiniest bit, so he just spilled _some_ of Shuichi’s water bottle down on his Ghost Tour shirt.  Shuichi rubbed his back, and when he managed to murmur something about the possibility of an _actual fucking dead woman_ Shuichi said, “Well, that explains it, I guess,” without even accusing him of lying or trying to pull a prank.  Making a ghost our of papier-mâché and fake blood capsules, like he’d actually done before…  Weren’t detectives supposed to be more suspicious of everything?

“I barely believed it at first, too, but you know…  I’ve been spending a lot of time with Korekiyo since Freshman year,” Shuichi pointed out.  “Did you really not go to any of the seances that _worked_?”

That was sort of the last straw.  Kokichi said they had better stay in a hotel that night, and then probably purify the poor empty town with an entire fast food restaurant’s stock of salt or something.  Shuichi laughed – awkward and familiar and like he _hadn’t_ just admitted to seeing actual ghosts around Hope’s Peak Academy sometimes – and said there was salt in the van.  Under Kokichi’s comic stash, in the very, very back, ‘cause Korekiyo didn’t like the stuff.  Couldn’t stand to be around exorcisms, either, for some very-suspicious reason. 

_(Okay, so that was why he hadn’t liked the exorcism movie, way back at school!  Huh.  The more you know.  Kokichi’d thought he was just being stuck-up!)_

Korekiyo said he was just around to observe humanity and what became of it, but that didn’t mean _they_ couldn’t do what they thought needed to be done.  Shuichi had acted alone before, after all – hence the salt.  It was probably in a detective’s nature to want to unravel something you might otherwise just marvel at, tasting pain in the stagnant air.  Kiyo thought it couldn’t be helped. 

Kokichi picked a hotel with a pool.


	3. Salt: Everywhere.  (Or – “Hero Type?”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, and welcome to chapter 3~~~ :D Thanks for sticking with this story!! I hope you've had fun/you have fun with this last chapter, too. Have a great day!

The hotel, first.  Kokichi liberated  _so_  many little soaps and pearly, sharp-smelling shampoo bottles!  That was gonna make traveling around on their mystical anthropology quest a whole lot less sucky, for one thing. 

_(Shuichi got kinda grumpy when his scalp was itchy, sometimes. See?  Kokichi had made a mental note to grab a ton of fancy travel shampoos if his detective ever ended up on the run with him and D.I.C.E.  Shuichi would be so impressed, as they cunningly evaded the law!)_

The rooms had giant beds, too, and there were restaurants nearby that they didn’t even have to hike through ages of probably-haunted forest to reach. Kokichi coaxed Shuichi into the pool with him, and they  _might’ve_  accidentally scared a couple elderly tourists away with a water gun battle.  True, they’d literally just graduated and all that, but Kokichi thought growing out of your playful side was a true loss. Like deciding to see the whole world in black and white all the time for some reason, or taking the carbonation out of soda on purpose.  It took a while to get Shuichi comfortable enough to really commit to the drama of Super Soakers, but once he did... Dang!  He almost had Kokichi beat!

The water was murky and stung their eyes some, but it was a nice distraction from Kokichi’s newfound understanding of their world. 

_(So many misplaced, desperate souls, scrambling just at the edge of life. Kinda a depressing thought!_

_Unless you were Korekiyo, apparently.)_

Speaking of Kiyo,  _he_  said he was thrilled to just wait on one of the strappy chairs by the edge of the pool, fully clothed and reading with a coy little smile on behind his gimp mask. 

_(Probably more creepy poetry, actually. Kokichi would’ve bet his hotel room key!)_

Kiyo said he enjoyed the chlorine smell  _(but why?)_  and observing what everybody else brought to the pool with them.  He  _did_ grab Shuichi’s water pistol at one point and try chasing Kokichi around a little bit - that was after Kokichi’d tried for a very ambitious splash and accidentally got his book wet, though. Shuichi put a stop to that pretty quick!  Said the hotel people would have to chew them out if anybody caught them running, first... But then he pointed out in a quieter voice how devastated he’d have been if either of them smashed their skull open all messily on the pool tile.

_(Aw, it definitely wasn’t Kokichi’s first time running across something slick and dangerous - he was D.I.C.E.’s Supreme Leader, after all.  _

_Still, it was super cute how worried Shuichi got about him, right?  And who knows, maybe Kiyo’s balance wasn’t so good!)_

They didn’t talk about exorcisms at all until it was very dark, and something Kokichi didn’t recognize was playing on the TV. Fluttering light washed over Shuichi’s face, dying the whites of his eyes in neon sugar soda colors. 

Korekiyo had already gone to sleep by that point, his equally-mysterious nighttime gimp mask on and his hair tangling over his pillow like inexplicably silky rope. He had left a small pile of books, talismans and crinkly pirate-map papers out for them, though, with a note on top saying,  _“I’ll come if you need me, Shuichi. As always. - Kiyo”_

“He doesn’t want to help with this, but I  _did_  get in a little too deep investigating a couple times.”  Shuichi ducked his head, sheepish. “Before we were dating - back when you were just starting to leave potentially ominous messages in my locker.”

“Good times,” said Kokichi. 

Shuichi shifted through Korekiyo’s helpful exorcist starter kit pile and smiled to himself. “Might’ve been different, if you were with me.  As it is, though, Kiyo had to bail me out a couple times –”

“What’s this ‘might’ve been’?  It  _would’ve_  been!” said Kokichi. It felt just a teensy but like his face was on fire, and he was grinning like his own plastic clown mask back at home. 

It wasn’t like he was scared of a little old exorcism — 

_(the phrase would’ve been “deeply and existentially uncomfortable)_

— but what could he do, after that?  Shuichi was gonna help him purify the empty town. They both knew it. Even Korekiyo knew it.  They left early, early the next morning, when Shuichi wouldn’t normally have been awake. They drank hotel coffee from styrofoam cups and kept the van’s AC on the whole way. Kokichi played some of his music, and then Shuichi played some of his...  They passed a couple crumbly muffins and continental breakfast pastries back and forth between them and got crumbs ground into the seats. 

The empty town looked different, in that early-morning haze.  Expectant and glittering with new rain, though the air was still holding its breath.  There was a little rusty bike propped outside on some kid’s lawn — there were pets’ water bowls left empty for so, so long.

“We  _could_  solve all the mysteries here, maybe,” Shuichi said.  There was a misty, faraway look in his eyes as he said it. An Ultimate Detective daydreaming about cases solved and all the puzzles getting put together one by one. “But I think I’ve learned enough now to end the pain here quickly, instead.”

“Hey, _I’m_ sold,” Kokichi said.  “Which smoke thingy should I set on fire first?” 

Kokichi and Shuichi spent for _ever_ drawing intricate winding designs in salt, next, actually. Wrapping the whole town up and binding it close; spreading purity around like they were seasoning the place to eat it. They traced patterns from Kiyo’s books over cracks in the road, sprinkling salt in among the tender dandelions; they traced them in people’s moldy old closets, under hanging clothes so soaked in dust it looked like the color was draining right out of them. They stepped over places where wooden floors had caved in, crumbling in the damp, and whenever Kokichi thought something grabbed at his ankles in the dark he just kept on walking. 

As they burned the smoke stuff Shuichi’d brought and he started up reading from Korekiyo’s books, the town changed.  Its sky stumbled into something darker, choking; people with caved-in faces watched them from behind all the windows. There, and then swallowed by the smoke. There, and then nowhere at all. 

Maybe sometimes Kokichi felt nails grabbing against his throat, or a desperate choking non-voice stroking through his hair, pressed against his ears like it would’ve liked nothing better than to climb inside him. Maybe sometimes he felt sure his body was just about to stand up without him meaning to, stand up and carry him away into one of the houses where he’d lie down dreaming until he became part of the empty town, too. 

He might have done it, if Shuichi hadn’t been right there beside him, their shoulders brushing. The smell of coffee and bug spray mixing with holy incense in the air. 

_(Later, Shuichi would say the same thing about him:_

_“I might have done it, too, if I’d been there alone.”_

_So ha-ha, suck on that, creepy ghost-impulses!)_

Littleby little, the spells were cast. Shuichi murmured them out of Korekiyo’s book, soft voice calm and real and true until the world seemed to gasp, and a wind blew through that place like a cold and echoey sigh. There was nobody in the windows, then, so maybe something had worked?  Maybe something had blown them all away. 

_(Kokichi’s throat did feel numb and tingly for days where a dead thing might have touched him, mind you. Kiyo said he was lucky it wasn’t something worse, something that would’ve needed ominous ghost medicine!_

_Just... Just as a super-fun note.)_

By the time they were finished, it was nearly noon and Korekiyo was probably getting antsy back at the hotel. Muttering all ominously to his invisible ghost (?) friend, or something. 

_( That probably deserved a little more investigation, now that Kokichi knew hauntings were actually a thing.  And a thing that could scratch people’s throats up – or worse! – too._

_Maybe it even tied back to the ominous police sketch D.I.C.E. had dug up, researching Kiyo?  The spooky serial killer one.  Kokichi’s gang was always game for a new project, especially when it meant making sure Shuichi wasn’t mixed up in something they’d need to help him out with!_

_That’s what good boyfriends did, after all, especially when they happened to lead prankster clown gangs.)_

Kokichi and Shuichi rode back to the city with a bunch of salt triumphantly in the front seat with them.  They’d move it back after picking Kiyo up, so he didn’t recoil all dramatically like a movie vampire in the sun or anything. They brushed oozy grey spiderwebs out of their hair; they talked about how Kokichi’s D.I.C.E. teammates were gonna lose their minds when he finally got decent enough cell service to tell them the whole story. 

They didn’t talk about what the existence of ghosts meant for the whole planet, yet, but they  _did_  casually discuss the possibility of exorcising every unhappy ghost ever, like the Batman of the afterlife.  Shoving everybody off to peace, when they needed it, and always smelling like fancy god-smoke. Having, like, a tool belt with salt on it in a bunch of little vials, and holy water, maybe. 

_(At that moment, Kokichi just kinda liked imagining it. He’d been hearing a lot about drowned kids and creepy murderous lovers making tea cozies out of faces, lately.  It made a sort of sense, right?)_

As the world turned from bumpy forest not-road to pavement, Shuichi glanced at Kokichi out of the corner of his smooth grey-gold eye, calculating. It was the sort of face Shuichi had worn just before he’d asked Kokichi out, choosing him from all the amazing people at their stupidly amazing school. Shuichi who was worth smuggling himself around in a duffel bag for, and building the same tent up over and over, and going camping even when there weren’t any s’mores.

_(Learning how to exorcise actual ghosts, too, apparently.)_

“You seem so excited, talking about exorcising all these people,” Shuichi said. “Saving them, right?  Are you sure you’re not kind of a hero type, Kokichi?”

Kokichi scoffed. He stretched out, propping his feet up on the dashboard.  “What?  No way. I’m a terrifying Ultimate Supreme Leader.  You  _know_  that!” 

“You were just describing how you could trick a vampire with your prank blood capsules, though.  And I hate to break it to you, but I’m not sure vampires actually exist.”

“Okay, but if they do, we have a pretty good plan!”  Kokichi knew he was avoiding Shuichi’s point, but he smiled out the window at all the trees, anyway.  All the so, so many trees, huddled around like they were whispering secrets to each other. 

They would pick Korekiyo up, maybe grab lunch. Maybe see if the city had anyplace to refuel on decent exorcism salt.  And then?

Well, Korekiyo probably had another anthropology site mapped out, and Kokichi _had_ gotten really great at setting up that dang tent. 


End file.
